


Masks

by CrimeAlley1048



Category: Batfamily - Fandom, Batman (Comics), Robin (Comics), batfam - Fandom
Genre: Gen, Profanity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-03-31 00:16:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19038472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrimeAlley1048/pseuds/CrimeAlley1048
Summary: Stephanie meets a legend.





	Masks

Stephanie’s case went sideways the moment she engaged. The helicopter settled onto the landing pad at the top of her roof, and two masked men stepped out onto the platform. Stephanie abandoned her patch of shadow for the bright lights at the center of the rooftop— a skyscraper that towered over the buildings below it. As she did, more men poured from the helicopter, far more than she expected.

They knew she was coming. One masked man sprayed bullets in her direction; Stephanie rolled aside to avoid them. The other five ran towards her.

_One at a time_ , Stephanie thought. She could take them one at a time, and the Spoiler would live to fight another day. Six at once? It might be close.

There was a trick to fighting multiple opponents, or so Cass told her: keep one between yourself and the others. Stephanie bounced on the balls of her feet. She was going to have to move fast.

The first mask came into combat range, gun in hand. Stephanie slammed her staff into his trigger arm, and he dropped his weapon. She kicked it away, then raised her leg for a second time and rammed her heel into his face. He swore loudly and retreated, panting with blood pouring out of his nose.

Two more masks quickly filled the opening, and Stephanie moved sideways to put one behind the other. The first held a knife that Stephanie dodged twice. The second’s gun was useless with a comrade directly in front of him.

Stephanie dispatched the knifeman with a backhand to the throat and a punch to the solar plexus. He doubled over while the gunman lunged forward. The gunman fired once and missed. Stephanie used her staff like a pool queue to shove him away.

The knifeman regained his footing and came at her for a second time. Stephanie swept his legs with her staff, and he and the gunman fell in a tangled heap at her feet.

The fourth man stepped sideways, around his fallen compatriots, to confront her. He threw a few punches that she avoided easily. _Not terrible_ , she thought. She wasn’t doing terrible.

At about that point, Stephanie noticed the man behind her. He tried a low kick the back of her legs that Stephanie blocked with her staff, but barely. While she did, the fourth man lunged for her from the front. She ducked between the two of them and out until the open air.

  
She had forgotten the man by the helicopter— the man holding an AK and waiting for his chance to shoot. Crap. She tried a smoke bomb, but the mist dissipated almost instantly in the wind from the helicopter. Stephanie sprinted across the rooftop as the bullets chased behind her, desperate for cover. There wasn’t any. She pulled her cape in front of her and braced herself for impact.

  
Impact never came. Behind the cape, Stephanie heard a series of crunches, another spray of bullets, and the sounds of several men yelling. She peeked over the top of the fabric and found the AK man on the ground without his gun, his arm twisted at an angle inconsistent with healthy bones. The cluster of injured men she had already fought regained its collective feet and stared across the rooftop at another figure that stood before the helicopter: a tall man in a red helmet.

  
Stephanie’s mission went so far sideways it dropped off the side of her skyscraper. That was the Red Hood. The Red-fucking-Hood was on her rooftop, and Stephanie was in so much trouble, she was _so screwed_ , she was absolutely and fully dead.

  
The Red Hood strode across the pavement towards her. Stephanie unfroze and brought her staff up in front of her. He didn’t seem to notice. He didn’t try to fight her. Instead, the Red Hood stopped beside her and pointed a gun towards the crowd of masks.

  
“Well?” he asked, beckoning them forward.

  
The man on the ground groaned as he tried unsuccessfully to pull himself back into a sitting position. Another mask bolted for the door to the stairwell and fled down it. The remaining four rushed across the rooftop towards them.

  
Stephanie felled the first mask with her staff— a sweeping upwards blow to the chin. He collapsed backwards, and his companions swerved to avoid him. Hood clubbed one with the butt of his gun, and the man went down, unconscious. Stephanie spun into a kick aimed at the third.

  
She miscalculated. The man stepped sideways, grabbed the tail end of Stephanie’s cape, and yanked her off balance. She felt his fist slam into her stomach through the hole in her guards. All the air left her lungs, and she struggled to fill them again.

  
_Keep going_ , she thought. You have to keep going. Stephanie stood upright and swung her staff like a baseball bat at his masked face. He put up an arm to block her, then yelled in pain as the impact hit it.

  
While the mask was distracted, Hood casually stepped forward, grabbed the man by the front of his shirt, and tossed him off the roof.

  
For a fraction of a second, Stephanie couldn’t process what she saw. She felt her eyes widen as the man tipped over the railing and began to fall down into the lights below. Hood turned away as if nothing had happened while Stephanie raced to the edge of the concrete.

  
“What are you _doing_?” she screamed over her shoulder.

  
“Helping,” said Hood.

  
“That isn’t helping!” Stephanie pulled a line from her belt, anchored it the railing, and shot it at the flailing man below her. It wrapped around his ankle as he fell. He bounced once, and Stephanie gasped in relief as he settled dangling in the air, screaming several stories below them but very much alive.

  
She turned back to the fight and found that it was over. The Red Hood stood in a pile of three fallen men, twirling a gun absentmindedly while he waited for her attention.

  
Stephanie walked forward and knelt to check for pulses. She found three of them. Thank God. She stepped away again and held her staff at the ready.

  
“Are we going to fight?” she asked.

  
The Red Hood shrugged. “Unnecessary. Introductions?”

  
“I know who you are.”

  
Stephanie did. She knew all the stories: pre-Hood and post. She knew about the murders and the ambushes and the drugs. She knew about the return and the events that followed. She knew about the Joker.

  
She knew about the memorial in the Cave, and more. Bruce told stories sometimes. Stories from years and years ago.

  
Hood stared at her, or at least, Stephanie assumed. She couldn’t see his eyes behind the helmet, but she got the feeling he might be sad.

  
“You were Robin,” he said.

“So were you.”

Hood jerked his head in a yeah-that-went-well kind of gesture, then reached up and tugged off the helmet. He wore a domino mask beneath it.

“Jason,” he said.

“Stephanie.”

“I’d shake your hand, but…” Jason gestured with his gun at her staff, and Stephanie nodded. No need for that.

“Well,” she asked, “what happens now?”

“I walk away,” said Jason, “and if you’re smart, you let me. Run back to Bruce and tell him what you saw. He can take things from there.”

Stephanie hesitated. Shouldn’t she try…?

Jason smiled at her. “I wouldn’t.”

“Right.”

She watched as he replaced his helmet, marched to the edge of the rooftop, and jumped over the side. Seconds later, the metal head of a grappling hook buried itself in the concrete of the building across the way. She heard him land and swing away again, out into the city.

So that was Jason Todd. Stephanie shivered; she couldn’t shake the feeling that she had just come very close to death. That was rational, she felt, after what happened to Bruce and Tim.

Sirens flashed far beneath her. Stephanie gave herself another second to contemplate, then raced across the rooftop herself, in the opposite direction, towards the Batcave. She swung into the darkness.


End file.
